Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett, a liberal and conservative appointed by presidents of different political parties, sat side by side in back-to-back hearings as they defended the court’s roughly $228 million ask for fiscal year 2027.
The House and Senate appropriations subcommittee hearings were more cordial and narrowly budget-focused than those with other high-profile individuals tend to be, centering mostly around the surge in threats facing federal judges and the need for heightened security at the nation’s highest court.
The court is seeking roughly $14.6 million for the Supreme Court Police to expand the justices’ personal protection, including calls for additional personnel to be added to the security details that protect them, their homes and their families.
Kagan and Barrett testified about the swell of politically motivated threats facing federal judges and rising cybersecurity concerns tied to the growth of artificial intelligence, telling lawmakers they need more funding to address these evolving situations.
The hearings were also an opportunity for lawmakers to flex their constitutional power of the purse.
“I don’t think there’s any question that security is a problem. Things have gotten a lot worse, and there’s just no doubt the justices need to be protected” professor Louis Michael Seidman, a constitutional law and 14th Amendment expert at Georgetown Law, told The Hill.
But that doesn’t mean Congress should give them a “blank check,” he added.
Seidman, who began his career by clerking for former Justice Thurgood Marshall, argued that Congress has not used its appropriations power “as effectively or as often” as it should when it comes to the court.
“Just as the justices oversee what Congress does, Congress has the right to oversee what the justices do,” he said. He pointed specifically to what he described as “pretty aggressive impingements” by the Supreme Court on congressional authority, including the landmark decision in April that weakened the scope of the Voting Rights Act.
“Congress is a co-equal branch of government,” Seidman said. “It's perfectly appropriate for them to use their appropriations power to express their pleasure at what the court has done.”
The professor argued the Supreme Court is an institution “way too unaccountable” to the public, noting it operates “almost in complete secrecy” with lifetime appointments and closed-door deliberations.
“In a republic, respect doesn't come with office,” he said. “It's earned by behavior, and so I think it would be a good thing if some of the quasi-religious mystique about the court was dissipated.”
Tuesday’s hearing marked the first time since 2019 that any Supreme Court justice has participated in public congressional testimony, and the first time both of those justices were women.
“I don’t know how it was decided that they would be the representatives, but I think it's not an accident that there was a liberal and a conservative, a Republican appointee and a Democratic appointee,” Seidman said, describing them both as “effective communicators” who are “less controversial” than some of their colleagues.
“I think the strategy was to try to make it less controversial and to lower the temperature,” he added.
While budget was in the spotlight, Kagan and Barrett also fielded their share of questions about how the emergency docket is used, whether an independent ethics-enforcement mechanism is needed and decision leaks.
But, the executive director of watchdog group Fix the Court, Gabe Roth, said there were topics left on the table.
“I would have loved to have heard more about, you know, partisan book tours and the fact that seven of nine justices, including Barrett, are authors,” he told The Hill after the Senate hearing. “They didn't talk about maybe judicial workplace conduct issues, which I think is, you know, sort of something that we're looking at in lower courts.”
Still, he applauded how lawmakers approached the hearings.
“I think I was really pleased with the members, you know, doing a good job of sort of balancing the need to discuss security with also engagement on issues that are important to them and their constituents in ensuring that the court follows the same level of ethics rules that every other level of government does.
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